December 18, 2011

Pear OS 3.0 Linux Panther - Review

David Tavares has announced the release of Pear OS 3.0, an Ubuntu-based desktop distribution with a Mac OS X-like look and feel (as well as slogan): "Pear
OS 3.0 'Panther' available. From the desktop you see when you start up
your PC to the applications you use every day, everything is designed to
be simple and intuitive. Of course, making amazing things simple
requires some seriously advanced technologies, and Pear OS is loaded
with them. Working and playing on a PC is all about applications, so
Pear OS makes it simple to find and open those applications fast. The
Dock is a handy place on your desktop for storing and launching your
favorite applications, and it makes switching between them a breeze.
Below is a good review:

Pear OS is a new Linux desktop distribution based on Ubuntu
Desktop with the graphical installer. Its development started in early
August 2011 by David Tavares (from France), and on August 15 2011, Pear
OS 1.0, the first version marked “stable,” was released. The latest
edition, release on December 14 2011, is Pear OS Linux Panther 3.

Though a Linux distribution running the GNOME 3 desktop, Pear OS’s
desktop is fashioned after Apple’s Mac OS X, and each major version’s
code name is taken from the Mac OS release with a corresponding version
number. So, “Panther,” the code name of Pear OS Linux 3, is taken from
the code name of Mac OS 10.3. If you have not been following Apple’s
flagship operating system, each Mac OS edition is named after a big cat.
Like all reviews published on this website, this one is based on test
installations of the 32-bit edition of Pear OS Linux Panther 3 (a 64-bit
edition is available too) in virtual environments and on real hardware.

The screen shot below shows the installer’s boot options. Selecting
any one of the first two options caused the system to boot into the Live
Desktop. From there, you may start the installation by clicking on the
“Install Pear OS” icon on the desktop. And that icon is on the desktop
whether you choose the first or second boot menu option. So, do not
expect that selecting the second option will boot straight into the
installation program. That was the first minor bug I encountered while
testing Pear OS Linux Panther 3. “Minor” means that the bug did not
affect the functionality of the system in any significant manner.

Another minor bug or error I encountered is shown in this screen
shot. It always happens while booting into a Live Desktop or an
installed system. Like the bug reported above, it did not affect the
functioning of the system.

The third minor bug surfaced after I clicked on the “Install Pear OS”
icon on the desktop. When I attempted to file a bug report by clicking Report Problem,

The alert message was (at least I tried to help):

Since Pear OS is based on Ubuntu Desktop, they share the same
installer (Ubiquity Installer) and installation routine. And, of course,
the same shortcomings at that level. For example, while attempting to
install it on a real computer with a target hard drive already playing
host to a default installation of Fedora 16 KDE, the installer did not detect the presence of that Fedora Spin on the hard drive. This is because by default, a Fedora system is installed on a partitioning scheme based on LVM, the Linux Logical Volume Manager.
The Ubiquity Installer is not capable of detecting such a system. That
is why the message in this screen shot incorrectly states that, “This
computer currently contains no detected operating systems.”

Even the Advanced partitioning tool does not help. This is a known
issue with the installer. Ok, enough about the installer. Let us see
what the the installed system has to offer.

Logging In And Using The System: The login screen is almost the same as that of Ubuntu 11.10 and Linux Mint 12.
One major difference, other than the “leafy” wallpaper, is that the
guest session is disabled by default. Also, there are only two options
in the login’s menu. In Pear OS, there is no GNOME 3 Fallback mode, so
booting into “Pear OS Panther (No effects)” drops you into the same
desktop that booting into “Pear OS Panther” gets you.

The desktop shows where Pear OS takes a different direction from that
taken by any other distributions that use the GNOME 3 desktop
environment. The distribution’s motto is Think Totally Different,
which is apt because the Mac OS-like dock and other features of the
desktop, shows that David Tavares is thinking outside (of) the box that
most Linux developers are in. It is a much better desktop than the
dual-headed apparition named Linux Mint 12. This is not saying that Pear
OS is perfect because it is not, but the minor issues I noticed in the
course of putting this review together are nothing compared to the
almost torturous task of using Ubuntu 11.10, Linux Mint 12 or any other
distribution that uses GNOME 3. While the top panel is fixed, the dock
is configurable.

This is a screen shot of the Docklets tab of the dock’s settings manager. By default, there are, aside from several applications icons,
two docklets on the dock. These are for the Trash and Battery Monitor.
The Battery Monitor is, of course, not visible on a desktop computer,
but Trash is (you cannot miss it in any of the screen shots). After
about five minutes of using the system, I quickly came to the conclusion
that I could use a few more very important Docklets. The way I use a
computer, a Workspace Switcher makes it much funner. Luckily, there is a
docklet for that. So, I added it to the dock.

But a problem with the Workspace Switcher is, it shows just one
workspace. What happened to the others? Unless there is a configuration
option that I overlooked, that is one more bug. If it is, then it is not
minor, but more of the medium importance variety.

Like all good docks, Pear OS’s dock can be configured to auto-hide,
so it does not eat into available desktop real estate when an
application whose window requires much (vertical) space is open.

Another neat feature of the desktop is Launchpad, a full-screen menu that is similar to the Takeoff Launcher
and Mandriva’s ROSA Launcher. A minor problem I observed with
Launchpad, which is visible in the screen shot below, is that it gets
truncated on the right side if the screen resolution is at 1024×768 or
lower. (Hint: The search box should be wider that is visible in the
screen shot.) Other that that, Launchpad is usable.

With regards to installed applications, the latest available edition
of Opera for Linux (version 11.60), is the default browser, and Sylpheed
is the default email client. A glaring omission in installed
applications is that there is no installed office suite. If you need
one, LibreOffice and OpenOffice are available for installation. Also,
there are no games installed.
By default, Pear OS ships with Adobe Flash plugin and a Java JRE
installed, so Opera has no problem rendering Flash content and in
passing the Java test.
Device notification works. However, the default action for audio CDs is
to make a copy with Brasero (it should be to play with Clementine, the
installed music player), and because the library required to play
encrypted video DVDs is not installed, you will get the error message
shown below if you attempt to play an encrypted video DVD with Totem,
the installed movie player.

A minor issue I observed, “minor” because I do not mind a sprinkling of french
on my desktop, is that two main applications are partly or entirely in
French. Clementine, for example, is entirely in French, and the
graphical application manager displays some text in French. Those are
the only two installed applications I observed that have some
localization issues. Software Management: There are two installed graphical applications managers – an old version of Ubuntu’s Software Center, and Synaptic Package Manager. The former is the one with localization issues. Synaptic has no such problems.

By default the system is configured to check for updates daily, but
only report the availability of non-security-related updates weekly. I
do not like that setting because if a newer version of an application is
available, I want to know pronto. But that is just me. Some might be
satisfied with the default setting.

System Management Applications: Almost all the
graphical management applications are accessible from GNOME 3′s System
Settings, but the two I will highlight here are not in System Settings.
They are the PPA manager, and Back In Time. The screen shot below shows
the main interface of Y PPA, the PPA (Personal Package Archive) manager.
It makes managing repositories a bit easier. With this tool, you would
not need to use the command line to add a repository or perform other
PPA-related management tasks on the system.

Back In Time, is a
graphical interface combining the capabilities of three separate Linux
applications – “rsync (take snapshots and restore), diff (check if
something changed) and cp (make hardlinks)”. Using it, it is easy to
take manual or automated snapshots of the system. You may also restore
the system to a previous state. This is just about the same thing you
can do with the Time Slider application in OpenIndiana.
On a test system from which this screen shot was taken, I configured
Back In Time to take hourly snapshots just to see if it really works. As
you can see, taking the snapshots worked, but I have not tried the
restoration aspect yet.

Physical and Network Security Posture:
Like Ubuntu, Pear OS Linux Panther 3 comes with the firewall activated,
but a graphical firewall client for managing it is not installed. Aside
from the firewall, AppArmor, one of 3 application firewalls for Linux distributions, is loaded, with 12 profiles and three processes in enforce
mode. Because it is based on Ubuntu Desktop with the graphical
installer, Pear OS lacks support for any physical security feature
during installation. Final Thoughts:
Despite of the (minor) issues I found in this distribution’s latest
release, it is the best distribution powered by the GNOME 3 desktop
environment that I have reviewed so far. And I do not particularly care
that it is fashioned after Mac OS X. After all, if you want to base your
distribution on another operating system, why base it on something but
the best. It is a new distribution, and the developer seems to have the
right ideas. All he needs to do now is to tweak it a little bit more,
make it as smooth as OS X.Resources: This
is the only GNOME 3 distribution that I feel very comfortable
recommending to any user, even a newbie. If you want to take it for a
spin yourself, download a 32- or 64-bit installation image from here. Post support questions here and at Questions & Answers.Screen Shots: There is just one more screen shot to share here. You may view additional screen shots at Pear OS Linux Panther 3 screenshot preview.
The desktop reconfigured to show two docks.